Goodbye, Grandma
Posted on April 5, 2024 by Ching under Family, Life.
Brian picked up grandma’s ashes from the funeral home yesterday. It reminded me of how I haven’t written about her passing. Honestly, it feels weird writing on here knowing she won’t be reading it. Grandma was literally the only person who ever read this blog. At least until the last year or so when Brian decided it wasn’t worth fixing her computer anymore each time she messed it up because she couldn’t see, anyway. I actually think that’s why her computer would get messed up. Brian had set it up so she had large icons on the desktop that she could just click on and easily open things like her email and our blog, etc. I think it got to the point where she could barely see and was clicking on the wrong things and then she would get lost and couldn’t figure out how to get back to where she needed to be. Every time this happened, she would call Brian in a panic because she thinks she’s “broken” her computer. Brian would be there almost every other day just resetting everything back to normal so he finally was just like that’s it – time to let the computer go. He was like, “I’m just going to tell her it’s broken to the point it can’t be fixed.”
Grandma loved sending (and receiving) emails. And she enjoyed reading this blog. Her face would be an inch away from the screen just to read the text but she did it anyway. She liked to keep up with what Brian and I were doing – what fancy parties (before COVID) we were attending, what food we were eating at various restaurants – and I think it helped her stay connected with the outside world given that, due to her age and frailty, we couldn’t just take her out to a restaurant on a whim. We could only take her out on special occasions. And, when I would post her pictures and write about things we did together, she really enjoyed reading those recaps. When I get completely immersed in pickleball and mostly wrote about tournaments and games and other pickleball-related things, she would tell Brian that she felt that I played pickleball too much. Grandma was never one to beat around the bush and she always would tell you what she was thinking.
Every year since grandpa passed away, there would be whispers of “I think this might be grandma’s last Christmas with us” or “we need to make this X-holiday special because it might be her last one” and every year she would prove us wrong and make it to another holiday and another. This last year was a little different, though. Grandma fell and hurt herself around Thanksgiving and spent the weeks leading up to Christmas in rehab. Her only goal was to recover in time so she could spend Christmas at our house. While she achieved this goal, we were all very concerned that this would be her last Christmas with us – more so than ever. She barely had enough strength to hold herself up in the chair while we exchanged gifts. Brian and his dad struggled to get her in and out of the car when they picked her up from the home to bring her to our house. In fact, they both made a point to say that we wouldn’t be taking grandma out anymore. Instead, we would come to her for the holidays so she wouldn’t have to be transported (which proved to be quite an ordeal, specially this last time).
Our next holiday would have been Easter. I was already thinking of how we would bring Easter to grandma this year instead of our usual brunch buffet at YaYa’s. Alas, it was not meant to be.
A few weeks before Easter Sunday, Brian got a call from Victoria Falls requesting hospice care. They said grandma was fine but they just didn’t have the staffing to fully provide the care she needed. Hospice would provide that additional assistance (to move her from the bed to her chair and bathe her stuff like that).
When Brian went to visit grandma on St. Patty’s Day, she was still talking and everything. On Monday hospice told Brian that grandma didn’t get out of bed so they requested that a medical bed be ordered so she could be moved to it instead. The medical bed was delivered on Wednesday and Brian went over there on his lunch hour to get the bed situated. At that point, grandma could no longer form words or communicate. Brian said hospice told him she hasn’t been able to speak to anyone since Monday.
On March 21, Thursday, hospice called and asked us to come because they didn’t think grandma would make it through the night. So we skipped dinner and spent most of the evening there. The soonest Brian’s dad could come up is Saturday so I told Brian I hoped that grandma would be able to hang in there at least until his dad could say goodbye.
The next day, I asked Brian for an update and he said there was no change to her vitals. Later that day, the hospice nurses said she started talking again. It was the darnedest thing. I was thinking, wow — she really is hanging in there, waiting for Brian’s dad to come. On Saturday afternoon, March 23, at around 1 pm, we got a call that she was gone.
Grandma would have been 102 had she made it to her birthday in June this year. It feels so strange now that she’s gone. She used to asked me to end all my posts with GNG for “Good Night, Grandma” and I don’t know if you’ve noticed that I hadn’t been doing that of late. I stopped shortly after Brian took her computer away so you won’t see GNGs at the end of posts going forward. She’s no longer here to say good night to, so I guess it’s time to bid her farewell. Goodbye, grandma.
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